The small-world network of global protests

Area of Science:

• Social Sciences
• Computational Social Science
• Network Science

Background:

• Protest diffusion is a global cascade process, but its mechanisms and extent remain poorly understood.
• Existing research lacks comprehensive empirical analysis of large-scale protest spread dynamics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To empirically investigate the spatial and temporal dynamics of global protest diffusion.
• To analyze the network structure of protest events using large-scale datasets.

Main Methods:

• Utilized protest data from GDELT and ICEWS, two extensive global datasets.
• Constructed temporal networks of protest events by dividing the globe into grid cells.
• Analyzed network properties such as small-world characteristics and average path lengths.

Main Results:

• Temporal protest networks exhibit small-world properties, indicating efficient diffusion pathways.
• Average path lengths in these networks have decreased over time, suggesting increased global connectivity.
• Identified persistent temporal hubs that facilitate rapid protest spread across regions.

Conclusions:

• Protest diffusion is facilitated by small-world network structures and temporal hubs.
• The world is becoming increasingly interconnected in terms of protest dynamics, with events spreading more rapidly.
• Findings support the hypothesis of quick global diffusion of protests from one region to another.